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Day
One Planning and Writing Your Ebook
What
to write about? Deciding on a subject or theme for your
ebook is important and will influence the pricing and
marketing strategies that you use throughout your business.
When
writing any book, it is always advised that you write about
something that interests you and not to pick a subject that
seems popular, but for which you have no interest.
If
you enjoy writing the ebook, it will show and your audience
will enjoy reading it much more.
Your
subject choice will also influence the competition you will
encounter and subsequently the price you will be able to
charge. Ebooks
concerning online marketing, online businesses, making money,
etc are relatively common and it is only the authors with
well-established brand names that can charge higher prices.
Ebooks that are written about less popular subjects,
understandably, will have much less competition and should be
able to charge higher prices.
My
personal interest is marketing and I will use a marketing
ebook as an example for this course.
So
you have decided on your subject, the next stage is to begin
researching for information.
The most obvious place to begin looking for information
is the internet. Here
you can find reports, articles and websites that will tell you
almost anything. It
is your job to go through and syndicate this information into
a single report that your audience will find interesting and
enjoyable to read.
When
searching for information to write your report, you might want
to pose a question, such as What are the most suitable
marketing strategies for a small internet company?
This makes it easier and more structured to search for
information. Probably
the best place to start would be search engines such as Google
or Yahoo. Other
places to look off the internet, will depend on the subject
you are writing about, these could be your local library,
museums and universities.
How
to write? The initial writing of your report should be
crafted on a normal word processing program such as MS Word.
This will allow you to write, re-write, correct
mistakes and make additions with ease.
As
previously suggested, you might want to set a question to base
your report on. This
will help you to structure and develop your report and give
you an end objective very important in the successful
completion of a written document.
Having
researched and written your report, you will need to transfer
it from a word processor document into an ebook file.
Generally these are either PDF or EXE files.
PDF
These are quite similar in appearance to a word processor
document and are generated by products like Adobe Acrobat.
These are better suited for longer documents, perhaps
50 pages or more. It
is possible to create hyperlinks to websites, however it is
less flexible in appearance and design, especially when
incorporating images and graphics.
EXE
These are html files, wrapped together into a single file.
The end result looks very similar to a normal website.
The difference is that the single EXE file can be
downloaded and stored on a PC, allowing it to be viewed at any
time, without being online.
As it is based on HTML files, it is possible to include
many different designs and images within the ebook and
naturally link to websites.
My
personal preference is for EXE based ebooks, simply because
they are easy to produce and appear visually better.
Generally, people do not tend to write ebooks with too
many pages unless they are writing novels, where it would be
more appropriate to opt for a PDF file.
To produce an EXE ebook file, you will require software
known as an ebook compiler.
I use Activ E-Book
Compiler, it is very straightforward
to use and has many features such as password protection,
rebranding, expiry dates.
It is also significantly better priced than many other
compiler products. A
free demo version can be downloaded here.
Unlike other demo products this does not expire after a
time period and is ideal to use it if you are writing
promotional ebooks to give away free.
Continue
to Day Two
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